Book description
Human dependence on technology has increased exponentially over the
past several centuries, and so too has the notion that we can fix
environmental problems with scientific applications. The Virtues of
Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge
proposes an alternative to this hubristic, shortsighted, and dangerous
worldview. The contributors argue that uncritical faith in scientific
knowledge has created many of the problems now threatening the planet
and that our wholesale reliance on scientific progress is both
untenable and myopic. Bill Vitek, Wes Jackson, and a diverse group of
thinkers, including Wendell Berry, Anna Peterson, and Robert
Root-Bernstein, offer profound arguments for the advantages of an
ignorance-based worldview. Their essays explore this philosophy from
numerous perspectives, including its origins, its essence, and how its
implementation can preserve vital natural resources for posterity. All
conclude that we must simply accept the proposition that our ignorance
far exceeds our knowledge and always will. Rejecting the belief that
science and technology are benignly at the service of society, the
authors argue that recognizing ignorance might be the only path to
reliable knowledge. They also uncover an interesting paradox:
knowledge and insight accumulate fastest in the minds of those who
hold an ignorance-based worldview, for by examining the alternatives
to a technology-based culture, they expand their imaginations.
Demonstrating that knowledge-based worldviews are more dangerous than
useful, The Virtues of Ignorance looks closely at the relationship
between the land and the future generations who will depend on it. The
authors argue that we can never improve upon nature but that we can,
by putting this new perspective to work in our professional and
personal lives, live sustainably on Earth.
""The Virtues of Ignorance provides an excellent
foundation for environmental reflection, research, and action.... I
have little doubt that [the book] will also raise provocative
questions about the nature of knowledge, the subject of one's
research, the style of one's teaching, and the methods of one's ethics
for other Worldviews readers who necessarily engage with uncertain,
limited, and changing knowledge." --Sarah E. Fredericks,
Worldviews" --
Bill Vitek, professor of philosophy at Clarkson University, is the
author of several books, including Promising, Rooted in the Land:
Essays on Community and Place, and Applying Philosophy. He lives in
Postdam, New York. Wes Jackson, president of the Land Institute and
former professor at Kansas Wesleyan and California State universities,
is the author of several books, including Rooted in the Land: Essays
on Community and Place, Becoming Native to this Place, and Altars of
an Unhewn Stone. He lives in Salina, Kansas.
